The present invention relates, in general, to electronics and, more particularly, to structures capable of storing energy and methods of manufacturing the structures.
Generally, energy storage elements store energy in a magnetic field or in an electrostatic field. In the past, the electronics industry has used inductors to store energy in an electromagnetic field. Discrete inductors are typically used to make transformers. For example, a pair of inductors can be wound around a common magnetic core to form the transformer, where one of the inductors serves as a primary inductor and the other inductor serves as a secondary inductor. These inductors are referred to as primary and secondary coils or primary and secondary windings. The ratio of the number of turns of the primary coil to the secondary coil is referred to as the turns ratio or the winding turns ratio of the transformer. The transformers can be configured to tap into different segments of the coils to select a desired turns ratio. It should be noted that the turns ratio can be set to be greater than one or less than one. A transformer with a turns ratio less than one may be referred to as a step-up transformer and a transformer with a turns ratio greater than one may be referred to as a step-down transformer. Although inductors and transformers are useful circuit structures, they have drawbacks including a large size, i.e., they are bulky, a limited frequency range, limitations in the ability to trim or adjust the coils or the inductors after being mounted to a structure such as, for example, a printed circuit board, and they are heavy.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have an energy storage element and a method for manufacturing energy storage elements that are adjustable, small, thin, bendable, and lightweight. It would be of further advantage for the structure and method to be cost efficient to implement.
For simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements in the figures are not necessarily to scale, and the same reference characters in different figures denote the same elements. Additionally, descriptions and details of well-known steps and elements are omitted for simplicity of the description. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the words during, while, and when as used herein are not exact terms that mean an action takes place instantly upon an initiating action but that there may be some small but reasonable delay, such as a propagation delay, between the reaction that is initiated by the initial action. The use of the words approximately, about, or substantially means that a value of an element has a parameter that is expected to be very close to a stated value or position. However, as is well known in the art there are always minor variances that prevent the values or positions from being exactly as stated.